“The greatest among you shall be the servant of all.” - Mark 10:44
San Jose, California - Hundreds turned out here for a memorial service for Roy Stevens, who died of cancer on August 6. Roy was a legend among San Jose’s poor. For almost two decades he was a tireless distributor of food, clothing, furniture, and services to those in need, yet never took a dime for his efforts. The newspaper described him as a “compassionate soul and a disturber of the peace.” His impact was so great that even the San Jose City Council, which detested him and everything he stood for, felt compelled to pass a resolution of commendation for him.
He was more than just a volunteer or an advocate - he was a revolutionary. Silicon Valley is world-renowned for the economic revolution it spawned. Less well-known is its downside: the homelessness and poverty it created here in its back yard, the streets of San Jose.
“Our city’s growth policies of gentrification,” Roy once wrote, “have eliminated housing for low and very low-income people and have provided new upper-income housing (Fairmont Hotel). Our city leaders have somehow forgotten that just a few years ago our valley was full of orchards and fields and that our main work force was the laborers. These same people of yesterday have been left out of the High Technology jobs, and many working people cannot afford housing any longer.”
Roy himself was part of that new class of displaced laborers. An auto mechanic by trade, for years he battled drug addiction, the prison system, and manic depression. By the 1970s he could no longer work and lived on a small disability pension. When the homeless population exploded in the 1980s, Roy became a full-time volunteer. As he strove to heal his society it became his way of healing himself. “Roy wasn’t one of those people who said I’ve got to get my own head together before I can reach out to other people,” said Larry Sweeney, pastor at First Christian Church.
But Roy did not stop at charity. He struggled to understand the root of the problem and attack it through political action. In 1991 he joined the organization which later became CHAM (Community Homeless Alliance Ministry). He became the backbone of every CHAM march and rally, every housing takeover and act of civil disobedience. Alongside his enthusiastic good will, Roy also bore a profound anger and irritability. He struggled to direct it against those responsible for the injustices he experienced around him.
Roy matured politically during the 1990s, when the resistance to poverty was still scattered and defensive. Yet he had a larger vision which led him in a direction which is instructive for the rest of us today. Roy instinctively shied away from the “identity politics” which attracted so many of his contemporaries. He understood that the homeless could never win the fight for homes by themselves, or with the few allies who traditionally supported them. He refused to be restricted to just one organization. He continually reached out to broaden the fight, working with groups rallying against police brutality, against welfare cuts, against the closure of San Jose Medical Center.
As far as Roy was concerned there was only one race, the human race. He proudly embraced the American flag, and wore a red, white and blue scarf attached to his hat. This caused consternation among some of his allies in the struggle, but to Roy the flag symbolized everything he fought for - liberty and justice for all. For Roy these were not just words but a daily guide to action.
Roy pushed the politics of protest to its limit and was ready to move beyond it. Due to his background, his experiences, his empathy, and his vision he never wavered in his sense of urgency and class perspective - the defense of the poor. He worked tirelessly toward the day when they would have the unity, support, and power to reorganize society along the lines of justice and economic human rights. His dream was to be able to walk through the streets of San Jose, greeting all the destitute families, and tell them they could go home now, knowing that they at last had a home to go to. He passes that vision and that urgency on to us.
